I see this thread is over 200 posts, which is great to see this much interest but I think the arguments are correct in that an instantaneous WATTS reading is meaningless since it has to be done over time. But to say that BLP is equivalent to using surplus equipment in grandma's basement is wrong. I can't find the pics of their lab but they have some awesome equipment, as 60 million goes a long ways. I forget who used to own BLP's building but I think it was pratt and whitney and they left behind a lot of state of the art equipment. Below is what the cell looks like and you can see their lab in some of the pics but their website won't let me grab the photos. Having a state of the art lab doesn't mean they have anything but they are well funded and a lot of the criticism of Rossi is that his lab looks like someone's garage and it looks like his equipment was bought from Ebay. I have better equipment than Rossi does, at home. Again, state of the art equipment or not, it is the results that count but I think better equipment allows for better, more accurate experiments and leaves them with no excuse on why they don't measure the power correctly.
If you look at the design of this cell, it looks like a fuel cell running backwards or maybe a continuously flowing electrolysis cell but the distance between the electrodes looks small so when they hit it with 12000 amps at 80 some volts, you would think it would overwhelm the insulators and grenade the cell. Anyone ever put a neon lamp across 120 volts without the 33k resister? It explodes in a flash of light, kind of cool but it scared the crap out of me when I was little. I could see the same thing happening here.
What I want to know is what should we look for on this January 28th demo? From the press release it says it's a low voltage high current input and it is D/C as anyone who has made an electrolysis cell knows, not only does it take D/C, it also has to have the correct polarity as the generated oxygen comes from the anode and hydrogen comes from the cathode. I don't see how they create a continuous plasma flow unless there is circulation of the water and how do they use the plasma? It seems to me that creating plasma in a water bath will flash the water to steam instead of into plasma or even hydrogen and oxygen with that much instantaneous current.
I would assume that they have to have a way for the water to flow into the cell and another way to have the plasma go into the magnetohydrodynamic converter but don't they need a vessel that can handle plasma? It seems like once the plasma is generated, they would have the same problem the hot fusion folks do and that is safely containing the plasma without destroying the container or electric generator or having the cooler walls quenching the creation of plasma. From the diagram posted above, they show the insides of the cell but not its container which, due to the reasons above, would seem to be an important part of the cell's design. They also say that the cell, once kicked off, has a self propagating electro-chemical reaction. I don't know if this means they only have to kick start the process and then it runs by itself which should be easy enough to test if true. If you look at the steps from the link above, it says:
1) Assume CIHT is similar to an alkaline fuel cell, except that an electric current is passed through it and an inert atmosphere with trace H2O vapor surrounds the cathode, anode, and electrolyte.
2)Current is introduced, which produces hydrogen and oxygen from the electrolysis of the supplied trace H2O. Then, the cell is discharged for a much longer time than it was charged at essentially the same voltage maintained by the energy released from the hydrino reaction.
3) Nascent H2O is formed at the anode during discharge by oxidation of OH- and reaction with H. Hydrinos are then formed at the anode during cell discharge as a result of the atomic hydrogen reacting with the nascent water that serves as the catalyst to form the hydrinos.
4) When the hydrinos form, energy is given off that causes spontaneous electrochemical reactions to occur at both electrodes that result in a self-propagating electrochemical cycle wherein H2O is converted to hydrinos, electricity, and oxygen. Specifically, oxidation-reduction reactions of H2O involving oxygen and oxygen ion intermediates such as hydroxide, oxides, peroxides, and superoxides are involved in the spontaneous electrolysis of water powered by hydrino formation that in turn result in the formation of catalyst and hydrinos. The equivalent of Steps 1 and 2 occur continuously, except that no electricity has been applied during this process. Power is produced with a large net gain in electricity (e.g. 10X) over that to initiate the spontaneous electricity-producing process.
What exactly is happening? It appears that oxygen, hydrogen, peroxide, hydrinos and super-oxides are formed that are then converted to hydrinos and catalyst. If the catalyst is formed in the first reaction, how can it be a catalyst although it sounds like once the cell is kicked off and the hydrinos are formed with the catalyst, then those are fed back into the reaction so it goes into self-sustain mode? Also, the formation of the hydrinos is apparently where the energy comes from, so what do they do with the hydrinos? Are they done with them after they're formed? It seems that this cell's real product is hydrogen, which is not a bad thing. If there was a way to break water up into its components that doesn't take more power than can be generated by burning the hydrogen, they could then use the hydrogen to power anything that can run on hydrogen and since it seems the reaction is self sustaining, the only input needed would be water but they say the output is the plasma which they use to generate power??? This kind of reminds me of the South Park underwear gnomes.
BLP kind of leaves step two out although I could see them protecting their unique process until they have a patent but that thinking would seem to me to be a problem with production units in that once these things are out in the wild, it should be easy enough to copy the technology if it isn't protected by patent. I don't know what the purpose of the hydrinos is, it sounds like they are created in the cell but what do they do and why are they important? In fact, what exactly is causing a regular looking electrolysis cell to produce hydrinos? What is their secret sauce and where is it; is it a unique metal on the electrodes, is it something in the water? Where is it on the cell diagram?
So, how are they generating power or heat? It says they hit the water fed vessel with 12,000 amps and it turns the water into plasma, then what? The press release says magnetohydrodynamic converter but I only know what that is because Wiki (I know) has a write up and a diagram and they say that the maximum efficiency so far is 30% which is no big deal if the input plasma is almost free :
What do they do with the plasma after it goes through the MHD? Does it turn back into water?
On one hand I can see them keeping the exact design of their cell secret since they don't have a patent but they do need to let independent people create a test that tells everyone what they are testing for, what results they are looking for and it has to be done over a decent time like a week. If the cell they are using in the January 28th demo is a pre-production cell, then hopefully, they will run it for a long time and have the proper equipment to measure the input power, the output power of the MHD generator and also, what do they do with the leftover reactants?
A few years ago, they used to say that not only were they creating hydrinos, but that they were also creating a unique mineral in the process that has some special qualities. What happened to them?
I can't wait to see January 28th roll around, I would very much like this to be real even though my hopes mean nothing when it comes down to science, I just hope Mill's dream of it being real didn't cause him and his researches to fall for confirmation bias in interpreting their results.
Unfortunately, I don't think that if this is successful that it proves or disproves LENR as the BLP process doesn't sound like LENR. I would like to see some serious funding to either prove or disprove the LENR/LANR effect and to come up with a working theory. The biggest problem is researchers think that if it is real, it will cost them funding on hot fusion or any other researcher's pet projects. There are too many instances of anomalous heat or energy to discount this area of research and it would nice to move LENR to the area of a real technology that we don't yet know the physics of. We know the physics of hot fusion, we just don't have reactors that create more energy than put in. It's the opposite with LENR, we have the experiments but we don't know the theory, yet.